Sinners star Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler are opening up on making Oscar nominations history.
The actor-director duo sat down for an interview with Good Morning America‘s Chris Connelly to discuss Sinners, which gathered a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, and their partnership, which has been over a decade in the making.
Coogler and Jordan recalled meeting in a Starbucks in 2011 to discuss their first joint project, Fruitvale Station.
“He reassured me. ‘Mike, I think you’re a movie star. Let’s go do this,'” Jordan said Coogler told him at the time.
The pair also discussed the moment they both realized that they had broken Oscars history on Oscar nomination morning.
Jordan said he woke up to missed messages and called his mother. “It felt great. You know, just to kind of hear her happiness and joy and knowing how much that she poured into me.”
Coogler said he watched the nominations with his spouse, Zinzi Coogler, who is also nominated as a producer on the film, and the pair celebrated with waffles.
Sinners marks the fifth collaboration between Coogler and Jordan, a partnership that includes the Creed movies and Black Panther.
Coogler reflected on what makes Jordan such an effective presence on screen.
“There’s a magic to Mike that I think like Tom Hanks has, where you see him and you care about him,” Coogler said. “As a character, he does everything. So what that gives him is an incredible amount of empathy when he’s on the screen,” Coogler said, adding that he also has “incredible drive.”
The pair said working together for as many years as they have has allowed them to work in sync.
“We complement one another,” said Jordan.
“You kind of know what the other person might need at a particular time to achieve a certain goal,” Coogler added.
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